Sociolinguistic characteristics of rhotics in Ecuadorean Andean

SOCIOLINGUISTIC CHARACTERISTICS OF RHOTICS IN ECUADOREAN
ANDEAN SPANISH
This study investigates the different realizations and the degrees of assibilation in
the Spanish spoken by the younger generation in the Andean region of Ecuador centred in
Quito and the surrounding areas
The term “Andean Spanish” has been used in Latin American Spanish Linguistics
to refer to the cross-national Spanish variety spoken in the Andes of Argentina, Bolivia,
Peru, Ecuador and Colombia (Arboleda Toro: 2000). One of the salient features of this
variety is the assibilation of rhotics, which is also present in the Costa Rican (Calvo
Shadid: 1995), Mexican (Rissel: 1989) among other areas in Spain.
Previous studies of Ecuadorean Spanish (Toscano Mateus: 1953, Canfield: 1981,
Arguello: 1978) spoken in the Andes have been descriptive in nature and have not
provided a quantitative or probabilistic analysis of the distribution of the variants within
this speech community.
This paper studies the correlations between the linguistic variants of the rhotics in
the Ecuadorean Andean variety and social factors such as age, class, ethnicity, sex and
register style based on Sociolinguistic Variationist principles (Labov: 1966, Silva
Corvalan: 2001) All the different realizations of these phonemes (five variants) such as
assibilation, fricativization, intermediate realizations between trill and assibilation, as
well as any occurrences of retroflex flaps of /r/ and /ê/ are analyzed using Goldvarb 2001.
Speakers are chosen from three different social backgrounds, Upper, Middle and Lower
Class (including education, occupation and ethnicity as major components of social
class), and according to sex. The analysis also takes into account other independent
variables such as register style and linguistic context. The results reveal that the
dependent linguistic variables have in fact correlations with social factors: The speakers
of mixed ethnicity from the Upper and Middle classes show that the assibilated features
are in the process of decline, contrary to previous studies which predicted the general use
of this feature by all speakers.
These phenomena may have implications for the outset of a more generalised use
of the non assibilated forms thus levelling itself with Lowland Spanish in Ecuador and
perhaps other speech varieties of Spanish in Latin America (cf Coronel: 1995). Of course,
there are many other linguistic features that must be studied before such large
generalisations are made, however, it may be a small token in a diachronic process of
language levelling with social factors as starting points evidenced primarily in the
increase in use of non-assibilated variants.
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